 I'm an urban planner who's been doing bicycle facility planning design and implementation for over 15 years Including I Had the privilege of working on sort of North America's first European style parking protected bike lane the cycle track on 9th Avenue in Manhattan And in all those years, I've never had a junket to go see the Mecca to see Amsterdam Copenhagen have never seen any of of them in person so Hoping that just putting this out to people around the world Looking for my junket to go see great bike facilities Meredith, can you help fantastic? Yeah, you are always more than welcome To definitely to come and I think there might be some interesting people in this call who also run study tours And I've also been on on study tours before including including Scott Bricker here from Pittsburgh But but yeah, it would be that would be fantastic Yeah, I just I just can't help thinking about travel with all of us cooped up and on zoom all the time So but with those intros I know you didn't want to hear about me and my desire to to travel around you're here to Learn about Oakland slow streets, and I really appreciate the invitation and happy to to to talk about it we're in a really unprecedented time and it's so tragic and sad what is happening around the world and I've Hear us talk about opportunities and silver linings and I do want to just start by cautioning the use of that language given what so many of our community members are are going through and And What you'll learn is that what we're doing is very much in response to where we are right now and While I am cautious on the opportunities and silver linings language. I've of course started this presentation with Cartoon that was in a national publication in the Bay Area Pointing out that our slow streets program is indeed a potential silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic and for us to get this kind of attention has been quite Flattering and exciting and The but I do want to talk about the background and how how we got here, you know first of all When COVID-19 hit the Bay Area is one of the the first regions to go into a shelter-in-place in Mid-March and immediately we were thinking about how we could as a Dott serve our community and just for background the Oakland Department of Transportation is a municipal Services agency in the city of Oakland and we manage the rights of way. We fill the potholes. We pave the streets We maintain and build the traffic signals the stop signs Stripe the crosswalks Enforce the parking regulations. We don't operate public transit and We had been You know, so the very specific problem that we saw Where we're sort of two two problems that Oakland Slow Streets is reacting to one Public spaces that are not the streets are our parks. We have a beautiful centrally located park Lake Merritt. We have an earthen lake with a park around it. It's kind of like a central park and On the weekends and on nice days we have tons of nice days here in Oakland People we had social distancing concerns people were cooped up. They needed to get out go for a jog go for a walk and We saw crowding at those attractive parks in our city. The second problem that we had was that With traffic volumes way down. We saw the small amount of traffic that was happening driving faster than it normally would and we saw people doing a lot of walking and biking for essential services to go to the grocery store to get their food or to stay in their neighborhood and Move around for health and sanity purposes in their neighborhood and when they were doing that what we saw was kind of the social distancing dance to Folks approaching one another on a sidewalk and saying oh, which one of us is gonna veer out into the street so that we can keep the physical distancing People going for runs recognizing they didn't want to sort of spew There are particles on people so choosing to do those runs in the roadbed families Who would normally be doing you know soccer leagues and going on camping trips just doing a neighborhood bike ride? on Streets that we wouldn't have normally seen kids small kids biking on and so we saw a lot of use of the road bed immediately by non motorized street users um to In response to cobin 19 and it was getting kind of awkward as everyone tried to keep their distance so we had these two problems and Slow streets was really conceived in reaction to that One of the big questions was where should we do this and Cities were really grappling with this notion of an attractive nuisance That if we were used to closing streets for a parade or a block party or a sick la via type event and we'd like to do those things you know get rid of the cars for a celebration and oakland has a great tradition of Of using our streets the public rights of way for coming together But we're actually not supposed to be coming together Um supposed to be sort of staying apart And so the concern was that if we closed the street right next to the lake people would be excited And we might bring more people in and start an attractive nuisance Or that if we even just closed a few streets that we would sort of create the feeling of a block party and so we really coordinated with our county public health department who was who was the lead during the pandemic kind of setting the rules around our shelter in place And pre vetted this concept with them and the concept is that We would find streets in more residential areas That have a transportation purpose. They're not cul-de-sacs. They're not the the smallest of the small streets and Where we could do an intervention to help people stay in their neighborhoods not come to the attractors And do that essential travel that sanity travel that exercise and that family bike ride And what we realized in this sort of iterative brainstorming process Was that we had a plan that was less than a year old adopted unanimously by our planning commission and city council Let's bike oakland to the oakland bike plan update Um strongly encourage you to check out the oakland bike plan Easy google search away And one of the layers in that bike plan were what we called the neighborhood bike route Layer part of the bicycle network Those are often called Bike boulevards or neighborhood greenways in different cities and the neighborhood bike routes kind of had this venn diagram overlap with Exactly what we were thinking Was needed during covet Um their streets that connect But aren't the bigger streets that emergency vehicles essential deliveries Are being used in high numbers? and so We said This system of streets are what we should sort of build our slow streets program off of and where we should encourage people to walk Bike or run or go on that family bike ride in in the road bed Uh in total that system was 74 Uh miles you see our mayor announcing the program um one of the things that for better or for worse um the word closure the the the The media does not um Use i'll stay on this slide Doesn't get nuances so the the big headline was we're closing streets um 74 miles of streets when what we were actually doing was saying no through traffic on those streets and that we would do interventions soft closures to sort of discourage and prevent that through traffic And recognize that bicyclist pedestrians non motorized street users would be the majority user and a motor vehicle Would be a guest and that was important Because people need to get to their homes. We have essential workers who need to commute. We have deliveries You need to get your food. You need we still need to collect the trash. We still need the post to be delivered so the soft closures were really the um The uh way we were doing this and it got a lot of attention because we were closing the streets, but the operational um aspect is what's really kind of interesting to me and I think the Steel we broke for government at least sat and sadly in america united states and many places Is that the notion of endorsing pedestrians children cyclists skateboarders on the road bed at the same exact time as motorists Overall, we've gotten very uh positive responses and we'll talk about That and but we've also had a lot of concerns about uh, historically underserved and minority communities Um concerned not just about process but about this intervention being the priority during covet 19 Given the challenges that uh communities are facing um, so 74 miles was the headline, but we were actually again didn't want to create block parties. So that's why 74 miles was the headline and um What we did that first friday was the next day after the headline we did five miles or 4.5 miles And then the next six days later Um, we did a second round and got to nine miles And so we're we're literally we we're not one month into this program. The first launch was april 11 Six days later april 17th was phase two. We then took a two-week break and we've been out there on May 1st and we're going again on may 8th And we'll be at 20 miles as of tomorrow um We've been iterating and improving as we go particularly around community out outreach with community partners and via surveys community-based organizations We established ways for formal input via that survey and to call 311 our sort of government health hotline Our partners developed flyers Our advocacy groups have been real partners here new flyers new branding and that has been added to the the barriers and barricades um We worked to integrate the slow streets program as part of our emergency operations center the the the whole covet 19 Response and we're being very proactive with partner agencies and I mentioned the county public health department Just zooming along As the map has evolved Right now on the ground. We have these 14 miles installed. That's the the the purple The public has the purple and the orange The blue is uh the candidates we released We've been doing iterations of release and give us feedback and a number of those blue lines five miles of them will be implemented Uh tomorrow, um, there'll be a press release Um later today where we announced that work um So there's been a lot of logistical things behind the scenes in in getting this up and running Uh Our own stock of barricades and signs and cones has been quite low and depleted So a lot of work around purchasing. Um, you might be more interested in evaluation and monitoring and how we we've both I used our parking enforcement team to sort of uh go around and see if barricades have been moved and and make adjustments and then uh the survey work and Observation work that we're developing to sort of evaluate the program We're actually asking advocates to go to the streets and take pictures at set times To sort of create sort of a visual database of the use of slow streets um community engagement has been uh Uh a real important part definitely A big lesson learned is that even in an emergency And you're racing and you want to serve your community We we'd had a rainy weekend We were really concerned about it social distancing issues on a beautiful weekend that was coming and we wanted to get those first streets out We did not make a number of phone calls that we should have made to advise Uh communities that we're building trust with communities who've been underserved by government historically and and really creating the perception that you know, this city Did something to a community as opposed to did something with Even if you're moving fast, even if you have an emergency Nothing keeps you from making those phone calls to making that advice and and we missed that and we've been doing Sort of uh rebuilding that trust ever since We've been having standing weekly meetings with our both our advocates and the community-based organizations Who are who we want to partner with to evolve the program which we'll talk about Um and we're also getting input For ideas for streets that weren't in that neighborhood bike route network of 74 miles So what we've done is eliminate a lot of candidates from that 74 mile Pot of streets from our bike plan, but added others based on The need of the emergency right now Including ones closer to our downtown near the lake to sort of take people Um uh to give people an alternative sort of suck them away from from the lake if you will um By the way, I love that picture of a couple kids skateboarding and on the ground There are actually some murals that we've allowed communities to to paint murals in a number of our streets in oakland So it's a combination of uh some programs that we have Past and present in oakland so um Our community survey We've been really pushing a survey to get feedback and um We'll talk about the findings. I'm actually going to go through these slides because I'm going to switch my screen Just jumping to uh evaluation you might be of interest to This slide might be of interest Really looking at how we can evaluate this program again. We're all working in a really rapid and nimble environment um Looking at the goals of the program um And sort of how do we find data that? Can feed an indicator as to whether we're achieving these goals and so um Uh, you see up there the goals around safety physical distancing And getting folks to and from essential services and making sure that we're not Not uh disrupting those essential services as part of that work So overall, um, we're iterating in uh as we do this work. Um Oops sorry Uh once we get to our 20 miles uh tomorrow, uh may 8th installation we're going to sort of Take the model that we've had and and sort of tweak it in that rather than put out these specific candidates and have people vote And give us sort of feedback and instantly go out with the streets We're going to have a little bit more focused conversations particularly in the historically underserved areas Where uh, we're getting ideas for streets, but there's also concerns that uh, the slow streets wasn't a program That was meeting their needs. Um, one of the evolutions we're looking at right now is Again, the slow streets picked streets that weren't heavily trafficked or particularly high speed in the first place And it did not treat our arterial roads the bigger roads where with traffic volumes down where buses trucks And folks are using in higher numbers, but we're seeing a lot of speeding And so we have a lot of crossings that could be made much safer Where people are going to a convenience store or a grocery store or an essential service So we're looking at is there a slow streets crossing treatment that we could do To help make some crossing safer. It's not as it won't get as many national headlines as a 74 mile closure initiative But it would serve the needs of the community, which is what we've been hearing in our feedback So, um, really excited about the use that's happened. I just want to before I sort of turn it over Just go through a couple other things on my screen. How's everything can I get at you? You're seeing all the pictures and the images in my voice everything good great Um, so I've got a few other tabs just to encourage people if they're curious Um, you can go come on zoom If you go to twitter and just check the hashtag oakland slow streets and click photos You can get a nice visual tour of some of the amazing things that we're seeing Parents letting their kids on road beds where cars can travel. This is you just don't see this much in uh, non sort of Cold to sack communities anymore and in urban communities with grids People have stopped letting their children use road beds. And so you see Images like this throughout and I'll just sort of cycle through um, this is actually uh a famous Buddha statue on one of our Streets in oakland. That's a whole nother story in a podcast um Just seeing our murals Uh as you go around get a feel for oakland Just um our volunteers who've been going around putting the oakland slow streets posters and information and flyers on the barricades It's been a really great partnership with our advocacy community again, uh lots of use by families um Just images of the backs of the barricades where we put the posters and the flyers um there and so encourage you to go to that um That hashtag this is in chinatown. So Again per that that neighborhood bike route network did not have any chinatown streets, which is more downtown more arterial type So but then we heard that there was a demand for that and we developed um, Alice street as a slow street, which is off the neighborhood bike route network. Um, so we so, uh, we implemented that last friday And then some images you'll see people have been inspired by our format of signs and barricades and have supplemented it With their own they've mimicked ours. And so the tactical urbanism That is very hard for government to endorse. Um, has been sort of growing Uh along with the slow streets program And one of the things we'll think about is is how that evolves, you know a lot of chalk art um people branding the street here um And a lot of kids have come out and and done done chalk art on the streets and then Last this is our great volunteers organizing coming to city hall every saturday handing out the flyers um So that folks can go socially distant go around they bike around every saturday and put the Flyers and posters up on the oakland slow streets And I want to thank by geese bay walk oakland bike oakland Transport oakland. We have incredible advocates who have been uh partners in this effort um Just a quick thing about um our Our another resource is our website if you google oakland slow streets or oakland ca.gov Backslash projects backs us oakland hyphen slow hyphen streets Really a website. It's got a history of our our press releases and um I would bring you your attention to the f a q and the details here some photos, but at the bottom the documents There's a survey findings um power point and this is um We're trying to be extremely transparent about um who this is serving And who we're hearing from And we need to be frank that this has been something that has been increased extremely popular with professional white higher income telecommuting type Families and the usage and the replies have been um Uh biased to our wealthier zip codes and we have all of that data here we can um and we're you know We're being transparent that the respondents are likely more likely to be white More likely to be high income And so that is why we think this program needs to evolve to serve all of our communities And so while it's been great and popular it's not um It's it's not meeting everyone's needs. So um that survey, uh, we released last week a preliminary results That's what i'm scrolling through now And i'll give you a preview today We're going to release a dashboard or a uh There's all these fancy terms here a a google data studio with what we've learned in from our input and so um Uh, i'll just sort of pop through that here real quick, but again giving people access to that data being transparent demographic uh data income race Geography and answering really interesting questions around whether you know, do do they approve of slow streets? Um, do they use slow streets? Um, what are your other needs that would be served? So, you know, just an example here By different geographies in our city showing that um north oakland, which is our wealthier Um urban but wealthier parts. You see we had 134 use positive uses but central east oakland Which has a quarter of our population only 14 people came to our survey and said this is working for them So we're really trying to be uh transparent and adjust to the program So i'm excited to release that to you all so that is um uh the the um The overview the details. I think this is a great, uh um Learning opportunity for us. Um, like I said We're focused on getting serving our community during COVID-19 and doing what people need right now in terms of you know, the kind of clear questions of like what happens after Our governor has talked about we we really can't even really think about after right now um we um We're not turning we're not going back We're not flipping a light switch to turn the economy back on it's more like a dimmer switch, right? And so we are going to be adjusting to sort of new slightly different realities over time And what we need to do is to sort of anticipate that next step and say how does What we're doing now serve in this sort of next step as the dimmer switch turn so Um, we do think that Having the barricades and the slow streets out there are in essence a wonderful kind of Pilot of getting people aware of your streets can be different And here's a way they might be different And so what do you think we can get feedback and say should should an intersection treatment similar Uh to what's out there now be put in in a permanent way, and I think that will help us have dialogue with our communities I think one thing in this world of planning a cycling city that you all think about a lot is how much and what should engagement with communities be like and I think as much Um work that we do To to to proactive is a hey, we're having a community meeting. Hey, we have an online survey. Hey talk about a bike plan Hey talk about a street redesign You're just not going to get everyone to react to something They have to see something and there's something about us having put something down in the street That's sort of really energized our conversation with our public And I think that more than the thing Is really almost the silver lining the putting something down quickly is giving is is sort of accelerating our conversations And during covet 19 it's important that government Be on an accelerated pace because the needs of our communities are are evolving Uh, so quickly so with that Uh, thank you. I'm glad the screen didn't crash again. And uh, I guess I'll turn it over to some q&a Thank you so much Ryan and and the one crash it just gave us a chance to have a little chat Um, that was amazing and I feel like we really got through quite a lot in not very much time So thank you so much And I'll just say that I really appreciate how Your focus is on helping your community and to to me as a campaigner particularly That it's just so important that we don't forget that in our rush to try and get cycling infrastructure And prove we've been right all along We just have to make sure that our priority first and foremost is helping our community and everything else will Hopefully work out down the track But I did promise meredith the first question so meredith here you go. It's your chance Thanks, thank you so much ryan. That was uh, that was really inspiring. Um And I was I've also been reading some of the uh, some of the questions that have been um, Pouring in over the past a couple minutes as well So, uh, maybe I can try to um, well my burning question. I guess is you mentioned, um that You know, you're in a nimble environment that really stood out to me. Um What I mean, I know that oakland has done, you know purple Um intersection treatments and you know, you said you use I used to live in oakland So, I mean, I do I I do remember the um the creativity that that oaklanders have But what does nimble mean to you especially in a in a major, you know bureaucratic environment What does nimble mean and has it always been that way? Um, and then in thinking about the the relationship with the with the slow streets I mean, what were those organizational tactics that you leveraged to accelerate this Program. Yeah, I think um nimble in part Is comes from a willingness to take risks And you know that doesn't come natural to government and so, um You know again, like I mentioned the breaking the seal of hey, we are gonna have people are in the roadbed We could Blind eye to that or we could say they're there. Let's do something to make it better But once we do something we own it and we own the outcome and the consequences and so um You need a bit of courage as an organization um To to be nimble. So, um, it's not just a a bureaucratic sort of mindset, um And I think uh The other thing that really benefit from is strong partnership with our advocacy community um, I think they they they find a great balance between pushing and partnering um and uh I think we actually didn't provide exactly the thing they were pushing for which they would like to see us close the streets Right next to the lake. Um, but we developed something sort of with their input um that that um They ultimately have become you know an amazing amazing partner on and have really Embraced and I think you know internally Like you're trying to be nimble, but you also want to collaborate. You don't want to just have like if it was just like The first idea I cooked up and we directed everyone to to do that We would probably we would have a really bad idea on the ground that would have already been removed because it would have So, you know, you have to have trust on your team your engineers your planners your community Um, you're you know, you're political and and communications people I think we again moving fast We did make some mistakes around communication and around community engagement And sort of those are lessons learned But we only learned those lessons by doing something and I guess if we did nothing We wouldn't even have had those lessons much less the program Great. Thank you. Thanks rock and to do when I go next. Yeah. Yes. There's so many questions So I'm trying to work out which one is a good one to follow on from that I think one thing that I really took from this as well and that I'm seeing a pattern around the world With the cities that are taking quick action Is that they haven't had to make this up from scratch? They've actually already had a lot of work in progress that they've been able to switch on But maybe in a cheaper way So you said you already had these plans that you were looking at and you've just had to adapt them to work in this situation I'm noticing that in other places as well. Um, that'd be correct assumption or or have you really felt that you've had to come up with things from scratch Yeah, I I think this is a really interesting um Sort of topic I would say like I said, there was this Venn diagram between the neighborhood bike routes and what we were trying to achieve so We did have the benefit that we had done a lot of thinking analysis And community engagement around establishing this layer of streets um So we were able to build off that plan and that was a great insight that we got in terms of But one of the things in our plan was we put a very robust network in the plan But we had committed to community engagement as those interventions would have rolled out, you know So traffic circles and bike full of our treatments wouldn't just Show up one day. We would talk to the communities particularly communities that have been so historically underserved and that part there was a lot of um There was a reaction to us saying hey, we did this great plan and you were part of that process thus we're cool Just just let us go do this without that conversation that I said, you know the that advice that we sort of left out um so um So yes build off your plans, but also think through what's what's right for this this moment Excellent Right. I've got a a bunch of questions. I'm going to wrap up magically into one and I guess we could um Call this your your first responders or your emergency agencies. There's been questions about um You have you been able to do this without police enforcement when they've clearly had a lot of other things that they need to do also you has there been um discussion about risks of terrorism and I think that probably relates to you don't want a destination You want this spread out so that you're not creating a place with the risk of terrorism And also have there been issues with first responders having um longer timeframes to get places So how have all those kinds of organizations reacted to this right? Yeah, and so I think is this is all a great reminder That I think people in your in this work know that we our public rights only aren't just for storing and moving private automobiles and we say it should be moving people and bikes, but it also you know the pipes underground and collecting trash and delivering mail we think a lot less even about those So, you know our our trash collection contract got very nervous when they saw these headlines and Again, it was a matter of explaining that these are we're going to put these barricades in a way that Trash collection vehicles can get through Explain to fire department that the fire trucks can get through and and once they really understood that they can There's enough room for a big enough opening for them They were okay and that even if the in that the barricades frankly could be knocked over If if it was you know if it ended up not being a wide enough opening um So that's an important. I think it's always important to think that through and I think that the the reaction Certain group of people reacted so well to closures like giving it back to the people and other people who do essential services Amazon delivery the the fear of closure was so big Um, so that was really important on the enforcement side. You know, I think that um, yeah our police department Oakland is not the wealthy city with a ton of resources You know arguably we have one of the a very small police department compared on a per capita basis and um, yeah It was important for them to make clear to us that if a car comes in and drives two blocks and that's technically Through traffic don't expect us to pull Cars over to say you were through traffic on that street and our communities didn't necessarily want that or some did Some didn't we think as designers and operators of the public realm when you have to rely on enforcement You've kind of failed as a designer and I think you this audience kind of gets that and so it was never our intent to design something With the need for enforcement So the big leap Was would those cars that went on that street act in a and if I may go off topic just a little bit Just would they would they make choices to drive as kind of guests in that space? And again as big a leap as that was we do have public spaces where Families walk and cars drive. They're called big suburban surface parking lots and they're But we've never those are on the other side of the property line and we've never operated Our public rights of way with that same sort of like cars are just going to their final destination and so For our police department That was actually the tough leap too because they're a public safety agency and said well our cars just going to come in and And hit the people and then the flip side is are the people going to feel comfortable With the cars there at the same time and what's amazing, you know, we're in america the bay area We have a lot of helicopter parents Who you know grab a kid if they even look at the asphalt on the road bed You know never step in there and in the slow streets treatment You see parents with three four-year-olds on a micro scooter giving 100 150 feet of leeway Letting them scoot down the street even though a car is turning on and coming to its final destination, which I was really kind of um Blown away by that level of comfort and the choices. So I I think that does reveal us as designers of public space really what we can achieve With with Our our design tools because we weren't using a particularly robust or expensive tool I completely agree with that I think that's what people just don't realize how much we can actually change people's lives their entire lifestyle with A few barriers to create better spaces And I think this crisis is actually helping us trust each other a lot more in so many ways in our communities But hopefully we can get some more trust on the roads If you've got a quick answer for this one because then my next question is going to be a nice juicy one They're just on the more technical side of things how many more signs and reminders and various things Have you had to put in between each of these interventions? Or is it that this is such a big deal now that maybe people know to expect it everywhere they go Yeah, so I think each corridor We have a traffic engineer who sort of looks at say a mile one of these corridors and says which intersections need The barricades we don't do it at every intersection. We do it It's sort of major intersections key points and think through that the system and what's a rational uh system we have It so we don't have a specific rule about how frequent they are. We're sort of judging the context of each street. So it hasn't We are getting feedback that's in sometimes that People might not feel comfortable that we might not have put enough In and so some of the drivers are still sort of getting on and then driving like it's a regular old street and not making those good choices so that process of Iterating and design adjustment is really just kind of kicking off. I think that gets to your question Yep, absolutely. And I think we all have to accept nothing is going to be perfect in these schemes We just need to get on with it and keep improving Um, yeah, I would while you get the next question I I want our web maps to show where the barricades are We've just got the lines now and so that people like you could look and see like how often we put that so That's something you should follow up on and hopefully we'll get to and see like how frequent do you really need to to get those good choices Excellent, right for the juicy one and the one that I think We're all afraid of is um the the the blockers from other departments and then the The critique how are you defending that critique? How are you overcoming those blockers? Sort of merging together a few questions here But I think you know what I mean just the people who just aren't Going to let this happen if they have their way Yeah, um well I think we haven't had major sort of You know internal folks. We've we've just had really great partners in our city administration amazing leadership from our mayor mayor Libby shaft And leadership is just so important. It's just a through line in what I've been able to work on And uh, which I'm so grateful for just working for great leaders who are willing to take risks I think that's Or just a super important ingredient. I'm sure you talk about that in this work all the time um So that's a key condition um The the survey I think has been helpful even though we acknowledge it's not been Representative the level of popular response to this has been is really strong to point to to say like Hey, three quarters of oaklanders who come to the survey say this is really good for them and what they want um And then the the last part is the sort of this conversation around underserved communities where it's not higher income Telecommuting folks and saying this isn't this isn't what we need given and given the challenges We're facing and I think that's a very legitimate critique and you need to take that on and sort of engage with that conversation and see You know how you can evolve your program because we shouldn't just be creating programs And we've seen that in cities where the bike lanes go in in areas and you end up with a very Disproportionate bike lane map or you end up providing a service that isn't serving all of your community I think you have to you have to listen um Be humble engage and and and adapt uh on based not get you know defensive or get your backup Yep, absolutely. I'll let um meredith take um meredith This could be the last question So if you could wrap up those final little points that have come through as well I'll let meredith Please that session and then hopefully we can just switch off the recording and have a good chat for those who've got some time Great. Um, yeah, I think uh, well, there seems to be some folks from uh, california also here in the In the chat room, but then um, you know, we're we're a global network here I'm in amsterdam. There's uh, you know the uk Um, I think I see somebody from um from australia somewhere um, so You know, what can what is the transferability of this type of of initiative and um, and or You know, what can others learn? um And then if you can be more specific about how The program will last or what's what's the legacy? You know after the pandemic You know, I I've again had the good fortune to work in New york city the largest city in the united states city of eight and a half million people in six thousand miles of streets and the city of oakland four hundred twenty thousand people um, and you know, roughly the population and population density of a borough of statten island and so um, I just think as planners as of some of the planning background context is Just kind of the first thing that you filter things through So, you know, and there's a this new added context of where a paint, you know, the status of your pandemic in your community so communities have to sort of Make the decisions of sort of work in their culture, but know that there's always room for leadership and innovation and I do think that It so one context is really important and your community is your advocates have to make the kind of their own assessments But two there's a universality I think of the desire of people to be in in public space and move and And and maybe there's a civic mindedness like I think you were alluding to that We can kind of get out of this that hey, we we forgot something. That's actually not that long ago New York City we Nostologize about stickball in the streets in Brooklyn And yet there's was really resistance to the notion of putting people in the in the road bed You know, I think even in in our communities in oakland There's a history of people playing in the streets that we've sort of gotten away from um That I think we maybe are Rediscovering at this moment with traffic volumes down so much and hearing hearing the birds and seeing the fresh air So I do think there there are things we can learn and maybe hold on to as we go forward That's wonderful. Thank you so much ryan. I'll um, I'll just say now. Thank you to everybody for coming along Thank you so much ryan for sharing what you're doing in oakland, but also for leading the way by doing it um I'm certainly uh, I have a meeting next week and I'll be talking all about What oakland is doing and hope that we can we can learn from you here in cambridge. So um, thank you so much Thanks to george for recording and george has said that this will be up on the youtube channel Tomorrow, um, and george has also shared all the suitable links for the urban cycling institute planning the cycling city course Um, if you're not already part of what we're doing I'm sure that marco would love me to pitch the mook get involved And join us because we are working on world domination. Aren't we marco who's um too busy cycling?